Naturally enough Byron regarded this pronouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth’s noble appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the popularity of contemporaries. —Editor ↩
Southey’s Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works, Part I Canto V Ed. 1838, V 39. —Editor ↩
Not having looked at many of that hue,
—[MS.]
Nor garters—save those of the “honi soit”—which lie
Round the Patrician legs which walk about,
The ornaments of levee and of rout.
Probably Lady Charlemont. See “Journal,” November 22, 1813. —Editor ↩
The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799); see his Essai sur l’Hygrométrie. F. H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) “made great use of his instrument on his voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the accumulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the air.”—Alexander von Humboldt, by Professor Klencke, translated by Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46. —Editor ↩
I’ll back a London “Bas” against Peru.
or,
I’ll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru.
or,
And so, old Sotheby, we’ll measure you.
—[MS.]
“The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments.” Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. “Before they cheapen ’em, they turn ’em about from this side to that, survey ’em from top to bottom. … Such of ’em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been niggardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as have youth and beauty pass their time well enough. … The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves’ education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for ’tis here, as ’tis in markets for horses, the handsomest don’t always appear, but are kept within doors.”
—A Voyage Into the Levant, by M. Tournefort, 1741, II 198, 199
See, too, for the description of the sale of two Circassians and one Georgian, Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade, … par N. E. Kleeman, 1780, pp. 141, 142. The “lowest offer for the prize Circassian was 4,000 piastres.” —Editor ↩
The females stood, till chosen each as victim
—[MS.]
To the soft oath of “Ana seing Siktum!”1220
For fear the Canto should become too long.
—[MS.]
Canto V was begun at Ravenna, October the 16th, and finished November the 20th, 1820. It was published August 8, 1821, together with Cantos III and IV. —Editor ↩
This expression of Homer has been much criticized. It hardly answers to our Atlantic ideas of the ocean, but is sufficiently applicable to the Hellespont, and the Bosphorus, with the Aegean intersected with islands.
[Vide Iliad, XIV 245, etc. Homer’s “ocean-stream” was not the Hellespont, but the rim of waters which encircled the disk of the world.] ↩
“The pleasure of going in a barge to Chelsea is not comparable to that of rowing upon the canal of the sea here, where, for twenty miles together, down the Bosphorus, the most beautiful variety of prospects present themselves. The Asian side is covered with fruit trees, villages, and the most delightful landscapes in nature; on the European stands Constantinople, situated on seven hills; showing an agreeable mixture of gardens, pine and cypress trees, palaces, mosques, and public buildings, raised one above another, with as much beauty and appearance of symmetry as your ladyship ever saw in a cabinet adorned by the most skilful hands, where jars show themselves above jars, mixed with canisters, babies, and candlesticks. This is a very odd comparison: but it gives me an exact idea of the thing.”
—See letter to Mr. Pope, No. XL June 17, 1717, and letter to the Countess of Bristol, No. XLVI n.d., Letters of the Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 1816, pp. 183–219
See, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, June 28, 1810, Letters, 1890, I 280, note 1. —Editor ↩
For Byron’s “Marys,” see Poetical Works, 1898, I 192, note 2. —Editor ↩
The “Giant’s Grave” is a height on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, much frequented by holiday parties; like Harrow and Highgate.
[“The Giant’s Mountain, 650 feet high, is almost exactly opposite Buyukdereh … It is called by the Turks Yoshadagh, Mountain of Joshua, because the Giant’s Grave on the top is, according to the Muslim legend, the grave of Joshua. The grave was formerly called the Couch of Hercules; but the classical story is that it was the tomb of Amycus, king of the Bebryces [on his grave grew the Laurus insana, a branch of which caused strife (Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. XVI cap. XLIV ed. 1593, II 198)]. The grave is 20 feet long, and 5 feet broad; it is within a stone enclosure, and is planted with flowers and bushes.”
—Handbook for Constantinople, p. 103]
For then the Parca are most busy spinning
—[MS.]
The fates of seamen, and the loud winds raise.
That he a man of rank and birth had been,
—[MS.]
And then they calculated on his ransom,
And last not least—he was so very handsome.
It chanced that near him, separately lotted,
—[MS.]
From out the group of slaves put up for sale,
A man of middle age, and—.
“The object of Suwarof’s
